Nathan Galloway wasn’t overly concerned about his time Thursday. He just wanted to make sure he stayed toward the front of the pack — which he did successfully.

The Jackson County senior placed fourth at Thursday’s MainStreet Newspapers Meet, running a 19:25.86 on the ultra-challenging Crow’s Lake course in Jefferson to help the Panthers to a fourth-place team showing. No runner broke the 18:30 mark.

“I raced hard,” Galloway said. “I wasn’t really worried about times today. I was just trying to get out front and stay out front and just run the best race I could.”

Galloway followed a trio of Pace Academy runners taking the top three spots in the meet. The Atlanta-area private school grabbed first-place team honors with 28 points. Galloway finished nine seconds out of third place.

“I was about where I thought I’d be,” Galloway said. “Those Pace guys came out of nowhere. But it was a good race. I feel like I might have been able to catch that last Pace guy if I had went with him sooner. Because I knew I pulled on him. I started to catch him, but I didn’t have enough race left.”

Galloway has enjoyed a string of four top-10 finishes this fall and has progressively improved his time in each race, save for Thursday’s race which saw slower times across the board.

He’s ready for what the rest of the year holds.

“I like how I broke 19 (minutes) the first race, broke 18 in the second and broke 17 in the third,” Galloway said. “The year is looking really great.”

Oscar Ponce added a 10th-place finish for Jackson County, running a 20:18.51. He was followed by Bryan Lozado (21st, 21:13.50), Tyler Rutledge (21:16.90) and Dawson Miller (22:13.40). The Panthers finished with 88 points.

“I feel like we did well,” coach Joseph Brubaker said. “I feel like one through five, we competed well. We came here knowing that times were going to be slower, but it’s important to compete person-to-person.”

Brubaker hopes the team can close out the regular season in strong fashion.
“We still have a month and a week until region, so we still have work to do,” Brubaker said.

“I thought we ran well for our ability,” coach Joseph Brubaker said. “We had some girls improve and start to believe a little bit more in what they can do and see an opportunity to do something in region with it.”

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:

Phone*

What is seven minus four?

Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Submitted comments will be subject to moderation before being displayed.